thevinetowine.blogspot.comBriar Valley's tasting room is open seven days a week.

This time of year -- even without the freezing cold of a typical January-February night -- is always a fun time to try different red blends.

Picked up one from Briar Valley Vineyard & Winery in Bedford, Pa., the other day that definitely will be opened soon. Owners Tod and Jean Manspeaker sell a Proprietor's Red that has a different makeup every year, depending on the season and the harvest. Their 2008 vintage features a blend of Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Lemberger. It aged 18 months.

The '08 Proprietor's Red has won several awards, including a silver in a national competition of female winemakers. Jean is the winemaker and said by phone last week that she has made that blend with three of the wines minus the Lemberger.

She said the winery has been opened since 2005. They produce wine out of vinifera grapes, no natives and no hybrids, and all their wines are dry. That's fairly rare around the region, so it's always interesting to hear why owners make that choice.

"To be honest, I felt if we were going to do it, I wanted to do serious wines," she said, "so that was my goal. And I wanted to do wines that we could grow well here and that were representative of the area. I realized that we were not going to do like big, fat heavy wines, like we get from California, not real oaky wines. I just knew that was not what we were going to do. That wasn't our vision. But yet I wanted to really try to do a serious wine.

I love . . . like the Rhone Valley, the Burgandys, Pinot Noir and all that. So I guess that was kind of a big influence in it. And I knew we could do some of the German varieties, which we do, the Riesling and the Gewurztraminer. I knew climate-wise and location-wise we could do a good job with them."

Jean said the vineyard sits at around 1170 feet, with a southeast-facing slope.

The description of their profile elicited the suggestion that they make what they like to drink. Jean agreed "Some more than others," she said, "but we don't grow anything we don't like to drink or we don't make a wine just to have it be a popular wine."

Their top sellers of the 2,000 or so cases they make are Chardonnay (white) and Merlot (red).

Here's the link to Briar Valley's web site, which offer some winemaker's notes on the Proprietor's Red and information on all the winery's wines. Briar Valley's tasting room, which opened in 2007, is open seven days a week.